Sunday, March 1, 2009

Card Of The Week March 1

I noticed the other day that on the back of this Topps card of Ichiro can be found the following: "He's the first MLB player in history to be a member of the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame".

Well, no, that's not true. Ichiro is NOT a member of the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame. What Ichiro is a member of is the Meikyukai or "Golden Players Club". Other members of the club with MLB experience are Hideki Matsui, Kazuhiro Sasaki and Shingo Takatsu. I'm not sure he was even the first of this group - Sasaki would have had over 250 saves when the 250 save criteria was added in 2003 while Ichiro didn't have over 2000 hits until 2004.

Ichiro's not even going to be the first MLB player to ever be inducted into the Japanese Baseball Hall Of Fame - Lefty O'Doul is already in.

But besides that, it's a good looking card... And the WBC kicks off Thursday!